Some people here don't like my what-if questions but
Ain't that what supercars are about? Doing the previously impossible?
If I posted about an aero brake some people here would have laughed loud. But now it[s a Bugatti Veyron feature.

Anyhow

What about a car with a separate brake pedal only for the rear wheels?
With a booster and hydraulic brakes.
This would make handbrake turns (immature but really fun) really easy.

Maybe even a another pedal for the front wheels?
For burnouts and close radius corner drifting.

Besides, there might be legal issues with an extra pedal to take driver focus and risk accidents.

There is nothing wrong with Questions, and no thing as a stupid question. But if you want people on a forum to take you serious, you need to think your subjects thru, do a bit a of research on your claims (ei Aero Brake and legal issues).
In that way people will discuss the matter at hand, instead of pointing out errors

There's a bunch of cars that have foot pedals for handbrakes, but they ratchet on and have a separate pull handle to release them. The better solution is line locks in the braking system so you can quickly move the bias to 100% on the end you want.

If you put the brake bias directly into a pedal that swivels clockwise, counterclockwise I could see it being functional. Perhaps a dash button that would lock/unlock the standard brake pedal to allow it to swivel when hilarity is needed...

I remember a Bosch ad from years ago with pedals for each wheel to illustrate why ABS can brake better than you.

__________________
I'm dropping out to create a company that starts with motorcycles, then cars, and forty years later signs a legendary Brazilian driver who has a public and expensive feud with his French teammate.

There was a model of Holden Toranas, I think LH/LX that had a pedal for the handbrake but it had it be released by a button somewhere. Being right hand drive in Oz I found the best set up was the HQ-HZ Holdens where the lever was next tot the seat on the right. It worked well. That said I haven’t done too many lately with the handle on the left. Lol.

The button on my mini's handbrake would pop off, which would cause the handbrake lever ratchet to be permanently released. This meant that it basically functioned as a rally handbrake, hold it on to lock the rears, just let go to release.

Rally/Drift handbrakes are generally hydraulically controlled though, not by cable. That would be alot easier than doing a 3rd/4th pedal. Ive seen some stunt cars operate with an extra pedal however, but i think that may have been related to keeping action shots of the driver unsuspecting.

I cannot speak for everyone, but I do not think your questions are a problem, in themselves. It is mostly how you present them that could be improved. For example, you yourself said that it is no fun having a forum where the last post is years old. Many of your suggestions have warranted fairly simple answers, of only a few posts. Consequently, the threads that are created for such questions will probably have only a few posts in them, and no new posts for years from now. Questions like those, such as the engine and seating location questions, would be best posted in the existing technical questions thread, instead of in new threads of their own.

The other thing that may help would be to change your phrasing of the question. "What about..." does not really have a clear answer, and makes the question seem more inane than it really is. You also seem to assume that no-one has thought of the idea before. You may get a better response by phrasing such questions without that assumption - for example "Why is this idea not used", because there is a pretty good chance that someone has thought of it, tried it and dismissed it, at some stage in the last 126 years. There is also a very good chance that someone in these forums will be able to tell you all about it.

I think you should be welcome to ask the questions, though, because they can provoke thought, and the resulting discussion can be interesting. In this case, I think that Sledgehammer's suggestion of a pedal-operated brake bias control is an interesting one. I would like to suggest a refinement. Instead of rotating the pedal, it could be operated, perhaps more intuitively, by rocking the face of the brake pedal up or down, or by pressing the top or bottom of the pedal, to determine bias. Side-to-side movement could control side-to-side bias, giving a driver a manual equivalent to electronic stability control. I would be astonished if anyone could master it, as an alternative to ESC, but it would be a neat test of skill. It would make directional control semi-independent of steering angle.

Existing cars, such as the afore-mentioned Torana or Citroen, could have the ratchet removed, or controllably locked open, from their foot-operated parking brake, so that it would function as a rally brake. This could be done very cheaply. I think it might be possible in the Torana by pulling the brake release toggle, and putting something behind it, like a bulldog clip, to stop it from re-engaging. I am sure that if anyone really wanted to, they could extend the conventional hand-brake cable or hydraulic line to the foot well, and install their own fourth pedal, at minimal cost. Hand-brake turns are possible using the hand-brake, so boosting would probably not be needed, with the force available on a foot-brake, unless the car is particularly heavy, or has unusually high rear-wheel grip.

The reason that it is not done with supercars is simple. Supercars would not go any faster if they had such a feature. Besides, as Brix says, I bet that some governments would have something to say if you included a feature, in a production car, that is specifically designed to make it easier to lose traction, for purposes of irresponsible driving practices. I don't think most manufacturers would want that image either, if they want to be taken seriously.

Same as not everyone wants to run past 200 or 150 mph in the world.
Not everyone wants to accelerate from a standstill to 60mph in less than 5 sec.
Not everyone wants to cornet at more than 1g.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brix

Besides, there might be legal issues with an extra pedal to take driver focus and risk accidents.

Agree there must be a disconnect option for security.

There's a bunch of cars that have foot pedals for handbrakes, but they ratchet on and have a separate pull handle to release them. The better solution is line locks in the braking system so you can quickly move the bias to 100% on the end you want.
They use line locks for drag racing burnouts and in amateur drifting.

Rally/Drift handbrakes are generally hydraulically controlled though, not by cable. That would be alot easier than doing a 3rd/4th pedal. Ive seen some stunt cars operate with an extra pedal however, but i think that may have been related to keeping action shots of the driver unsuspecting.
What true car enthusiast wouldn't want to be able to drive like a movie stuntman from time to time?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MilesR

The reason that it is not done with supercars is simple. Supercars would not go any faster if they had such a feature. Besides, as Brix says, I bet that some governments would have something to say if you included a feature, in a production car, that is specifically designed to make it easier to lose traction, for purposes of irresponsible driving practices. I don't think most manufacturers would want that image either, if they want to be taken seriously.

That's what supercars are about: irrationality.

I confess I'm a Top Gear junkie.
So this reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson trying to turn off the traction control in a McLaren MP4-12C.
After a long turn off procedure he told he asked McLaren engineers why it's so complicated to turn it off.
They asked Why would you like it to turn it off at all?
He said because it's fun.
They said "Fun? Maybe I should look up fun in the dictionary"

Supercars are expensive TOYS.
It's not rational to buy or drive supercars.
If you want rationality you should buy a 4 cylinder station wagon or minivan.

Supercars/sport cars flourish when they are designed to be wild and irrational.
They go bananas when they become poseur cars.

That's why I love Top Gear so much:
Because they are not serious at all. They are the three stooges testing supercars.
So seriously: not to be taken seriously is the way to go.

Same as not everyone wants to run past 200 or 150 mph in the world.
Not everyone wants to accelerate from a standstill to 60mph in less than 5 sec.
Not everyone wants to cornet at more than 1g.

Yes, but this is a silly idea. Anyway like other have said, three pedals are enough having four will slow things down and make life a lot harder for handbrake turns which defeats the idea in the first place.